Cops Waking Up Drivers Who Leave Cellphones, GPS And Other Valuables In Their Cars

If you live in Richmond, VA, and have a habit of leaving your phone, GPS device or some other valuable item in your car, don’t be surprised if you’re woken up in the middle of the night by your local police officer.

In an attempt to curb lax behavior that all but invites criminals to steal your stuff, officers in five Richmond neighborhoods are shining their lights at the front and back seats of cars parked on the street between the hours of midnight and 4 a.m.

When a cop spots a valuable item out in the open, they will check the registration info for the vehicle to see if the owner lives nearby. If so, the officer will perform a “wake-up call” to let people know their items are just waiting to be stolen.

The police lieutenant behind the initiative understands that some people will not be too thrilled to be rousted out of bed by a police officer at the door, but says, “It is my hope that the officers will explain to the residents the reason for this ‘inconvenient intrusion’ and that the residents will appreciate the reasoning behind it.”

I think this sort of plan actually has allot of benefits for the people of the city. They meet there local cops, not in a bad way. When I say bad way one its not like there in trouble and the officer is only try to help them by preventing the crime anyways.

I will say, if I was woken up in this matter I would be a little P’od but hopefully I would realize the police are only looking out for me.

Lets see…. Police will not actually go hunt down stuff from this, the most they will do is fill out a report. And most likely the value of the stuff is under what your insurance will pay for… and it is your premium that will go up if your car is busted into, not in general everyone’s (unless the break ins are happening all the time, in which case your car is getting busted into anyway).

Oh and auto insurance will often not cover the value of items in the car if it is broken into…. So let them have their crap taken and learn the lesson

hey, when my house got burglarized and i scoured craigslist for my belongings, i found a computer monitor that matched mine and faxed it to the detective. he actually emailed the seller and verified the serial number to make sure it wasn’t mine. presuming the seller was honest….
but see, he did a little bit of work. or at least emailed me back and lied about working

If they even bother to take a report, that is. I had a in-dash stereo stolen from my *locked* car parked at my home in a DC suburb a couple of years ago. County police refused to even take a report, let alone actually send someone out to investigate…even though two of my neighbors also had valuables stolen from their vehicles the same night.

Plenty of time for the cops to sit on the side of the road to collect revenue, though. My tax dollars at work.

Some cops do follow up. I know from experience. And I’m not saying that I even agree with this campaign; I think there are a ton of better ways to handle this. I’m just saying that spending tax dollars on prevention isn’t a bad thing.

Huh? The cops aren’t touching the car, much less any doors. They’re simply looking inside cars to see if any valuables are visible. If there are then they attempt to identify the owner and go knock on the owners door. How is this a violation of anything? Last I checked, anything left out in the open in public view is there for anybody to look at.

And how is this *not* fighting crime? They’re trying to prevent crime by doing this.

Why would the cops be interested in finding other things to do if there are plenty of teenagers they can bust for pot? Easy arrests, get to put those “punk kids” in their place, and little or no effort required of them. The officers in my town have made a career out of it. Hey, who cares if an arrest record screws up a kid’s life far more than experimenting with weed ever will? They’re just doing their job, after all.

Crime prevention falls within the purview of normal and acceptable modern policing functions.

Besides, the cops don’t know where or when the next *crime* is going to take place any more than you do. Except for traffic enforcement, they are a reactionary force for the most part.

Now having said all that, I think a different approach might be better. Note the date/time/location/items and use the DMV info to send the person a letter instead of beating on their door in the middle of the night.

“Fighting crime”? They’re not Batman. Prevention is a great way to fight crime. If a cop wakes you up in the middle of the night because you left your GPS in full view, you’ll never forget to hide it again.

I would also not forget to get the officer’s number, file a formal complaint, then create a ten mile wide blast radius of stink about it to every damn person in my city’s government, followed by the most raging letter to the editor campaign since the civil rights movement. Then I would see if I could mobilize my local Tea Party Crazies.

It wasn’t the middle of the night — I could come back to find 60 pounds of zucchini and 30 pounds of tomatoes in the car if I had to wait in line at the post office. Unless you’re a commercial canner, you couldn’t possibly use 1% of the stuff.

Someone stole my five-year-old, $40-when-it-was-new, known-issue-overheating radio out of my car. They broke one window, broke the lock on the passenger door, broke the dashboard, and cracked the moulding on the dash.

One of my friends told me that crooks steal GPS units not for the unit themselves, but for the home address programmed inside. If you’re in another town, and your car and GPS are somewhere else, chances are the house is vacant, leaving you open for robbery.

I have no idea if this is true. Just to be on the safe side, the home address in my GPS unit is the county courthouse, where the sheriff’s office is located.

THIS. I’m somewhat of an insomniac, so I have a hard enough time getting enough sleep as it is. Wake me up for something this stupid, and I’d be PISSED.

Also, there are thousands of dollars worth of stuff in my vehicle worth stealing. ALL OF IT is attached to the vehicle, and cannot be taken out like a GPS or cell phone (head unit, amplifiers, speakers, subwoofers, capacitors, etc.).

Stop wiping the asses of stupid people. There are MUCH better things for cops to be doing between 00:00 and 04:00. Or are our precious cell phones and GPS units more important than the murdering of innocent people by drunk drivers? Alcohol-related crashes are about five times more likely to happen at night. Midnight to 4am is THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT.

This PD is a joke, wasting resources on very low priority crimes when they could be preventing deaths.

Agreed. One of my top personal rules is “Don’t fuck with my sleep.” It’s a remnant of the years I spent working swing shifts. If a cop knocked on my door at 2 AM just to tell me I had left an object in my car, which I most likely knew damn well I had left in my car, they would not get a warm welcome.

I cannot wait to see how the public outcry gets this stopped…. They did a thing here once where the police would pull people over who were good drivers to a noticeable extent and give them movie passes and say good job… People were livid about it and the thing lasted for about a week.

After a few midnight door knocks waking dogs kids and neighbors up I suspect the police are going to find that this was a bad idea to implement. If people want to leave their stuff where it can be taken then it is their life lesson to be learned.

On the door locking thing, I had an old car where the door locks did not work so well from the outside, I would be sending the local police a bill for the locksmith getting my door open!

Often the police have good intentions but do not think the practicality of their actions through

The problem with pulling people over is that you may be destroying someone’s life. My boss doesn’t give a flying fuck if I was pulled over for being a good driver, all he cares about is that I was 1 minute late for work.

RVA cops also recently went around leaving “Violation?” brochures under windshield wipers alerting people about recent auto break-ins. Left one on my car in a parking lot where two car windows had been busted. I thought it was a nice service, till the lot was littered with bright green brochures from people who’d dropped them as they got in the car. It’s always something, I guess.

If anyone knocks on my door in the middle of the night and they are not a blood relative they will not get the door answered. #PeepHoles

If a cop is knocking on the door in the middle of the night and it’s something like this (versus notice that someone died or I need to vacate the area due to a giant fire) they are getting a formal complaint down at the station, a blog post in my town’s blog (penned by me), and a topic of conversation at the next town meeting. No joke.

This is a bit stupid. I stayed in a hotel once, and all the cops did when seeing the GPS on my dash was to put an easy-to-remove clear sticker on the window asking me to kindly put away my valuables when leaving the car.

I understand the cops’ intentions here, but this seems like a really dumb idea. If they want to do a public service campaign about the issue, I think there are better ways of handling it. And if they want to personally approach people to let them know about break-ins in the area and give them some tips on how to prevent them, I think that could work. But do it in the daytime.

People are often home on weekends or in the early evening. So an in-person visit might make sense then. They could also do a flier campaign — with information about the rise in break ins and tips on how to lower your risk of being burglarized — and put them in people’s doors. Or they could contact the local newspaper to run a story on the topic.

This is truly going above and beyond serving the
community if you ask me. Any boob that leaves any
valuables in plain sight even in a locked car deserves
to have them taken. Is the entire world just completely
dumbing down. Then when the stuff is taken they are
so indignant that the police should be protecting them
from their own stupidity.

Locking someone’s door can be an issue. People in high crime areas leave doors unlocked intentionally so thieves don’t break their windows just to see that there’s nothing valuable inside. Wish it wasn’t true, but…

Our local police are always putting announcements in the paper reminding people not to leave valuables in their cars, and to lock the doors. Every week there are reports of all sorts of things being stolen out of cars. I doubt the prescription drug ones, though, since it’s always painkillers, and if I had good painkillers I’d be danged if I’d leave them in my car. I suspect they were stolen, but taken or sold, and the person wanted a new script.

I don’t lock my vehicle. There’s nothing in it of any value, and the last thing I want is my window broken out so someone can get a home ripped CD from the console.

This is absurd. Every adult knows it’s not a good idea to leave valuables in a car at night, though most of us forget from time to time. The police should solve crimes, not harass people who’ve broken no law.

When I lived there, there was a fine of 5 Marks for each unlocked door.
And if one door was unlocked the thinking was that they might as well all be unlocked so you were fined 5 Marks per door. 4 door hatch backs were 25 DM.

Didn’t notice many unlocked cars there, and never heard of any theft from vehicles at all.

Once, I made the mistake of leaving a broken notebook PC on the back seat of my car. Although it was pretty much worthless, it would have made a great target for a thief who didn’t know this.

Instead of becoming a crime statistic, I got a 6 AM wakeup call from the head of my HOA security patrol (an off duty Harris County Sherriff’s Deputy who is also a customer at my PC repair shop). He half-jokingly asked me if I wanted to keep the computer or let a thief have it.

Lesson learned (without having to spend hundreds of $$$ to replace a broken car window).

If they can deter the crime, then it won’t happen…and if theres an area of town where idiots are always leaving things in their cars unlocked, then theives will frequent that area, and worse things might happen. My personal opinion is that if you are dumb enough to leave valuables in plain sight in an unlocked car, you don’t deserve the valuables…but, I don’t want theives in my area either, just becasue my neighbors are morons. So, late night calls, thats a cute idea. Maybe even just locking the car, and leaving a note (the police were here) might get the idea across too.

Last Friday (good friday actually) I was reading by an open window in my upstairs apartment, and I overhear some kids down in the parking lot. They were around middle school aged, looking into cars and checking doors to see if they were locked. It was a bit after noon. They were near my car (locked) and then started walking toward it with a purpose, it seemed. (As a side note, I am a middle school teacher, and don’t trust 12 year olds at all)
Anyways, so I opened my window and made it obvious I was looking at them, and they did that “Innocent Walk away”, and had these totally guilty faces on…something I see as a teacher often. They left the lot and were watching me from around the other buildings, I suppose to see if I was still looking. I took their picture with my camera and called the police, and I honestly didn’t think anything would happen, but to my shock a cop car, plus two undercovers in really beat up cars came, and got the little jerks. They were not arrested, as they were not technically stealing anything, but they were brought back to their parent’s apartments and according to the cop, were crying and were severley warned. He thanked me for looking out and calling, and seemed to be amused at the fact that the kids were crying.

That’s my vehicle and my items and I have the right to leave them in my vehicle wherever I choose. Doing so does not condone someone breaking into my vehicle to steal from me and it should not be cause for a policeman to come to my home and intrude upon my privacy. This program is RIDICULOUS. They should be focusing on the thieves instead. What’s next, are they going to find women walking alone at night and yell at them that they could be the victim of a mugging or sexual assault and shouldnt be out alone like that?!

The hell with them. They want to complain about cops waking them up to prevent robbery? “Oh boo hoo hoo it would wake up my precious diaper filler!!” Just let their windows get smashed in and their fancy gadgets get stolen, then wake them up for that instead. Job security! Whiners.

Loser officer sees SMOKING hot woman drive by, follows, wants an excuse to meet her. Checks in car when she is asleep and finds a bogus reason to wake her up in her night clothes to answer the door. Has to do it this way as MOST jurisdictions do NOT allow officers to run plates for no reason anymore. And plates run are supposed to be logged to see who is running them.

Gets called out by person / husband of smoking hot woman. They complain to the precinct. Loser cops just says he is trying to be PROACTIVE in stopping crime.

Seems funny to me though…
If this neighborhood you are patrolling has so many thefts, why is it you are incapable of catching the thieves?
Seems like you have the time frame down pat. Easy Peasy set up a bait vehicle and catch the perps.

I worked security for a hospital a few years back. One day, our genius supervisor decided to be pro active about people leaving expensive stuff in plain sight. He decided to order these flyers that we were to place on the windshields of cars that had expensive items out in the open. However, the program never took off when I asked him why we were going to announce to burglars which cars had the best stuff in them. Personally, if you leave your crap out in the open where anyone can see it, you deserve to get your stuff stolen. You’re an idiot. And yeah, I know. You should be able to leave your stuff out in the open without fear of theft. But that’s not how the world works. There are bad people and you are responsible for the safety of yourself, your family and your property. That’s why you look both ways when you cross at the the marked crosswalk with your kids.